Yellow buses, ‘green’ city

The City of New York, with its prohibition on smoking in public places, ban on trans fats, relentless bike-lane-building and assorted other “it’s-good-for-you” initiatives, has been getting ever closer to being a full-blown Nanny State.

But in no area of civic life is the city a more vigilant guardian than it is with schoolchildren, who are protected against all manner of impurity. The watchfulness extends from the books they’re allowed to read to the juices they’re allowed to drink.

That’s in school. When it comes to providing safe passage to and from school, the otherwise attentive city has effectively told far too many young kids that they’re pretty much on their own.

The start of this school year has seen yet another round of confusion and upset over which children are eligible to ride on yellow school buses. And we’ve heard another barrage of complaints from parents outraged about the Department of Education’s tightfisted policies as it continues to curtail bus service in order to cut costs.

Last week, Advance education reporter Amisha Padnani caught up with one student, Michael Lorito of Westerleigh, who was given a city-supplied MetroCard and told he should take the city bus to school. That’s because he has “aged out” of his eligibility to ride the school bus, even though the bus passes right in front of his house.

He’s 7 years old.

He could walk, but that would mean at least a 50-minute round-trip odyssey along a heavily traveled service road, across busy Forest Avenue and past a couple of dicey areas that understandably worry his mother.

And he is far from the only example of the city’s inflexibility on school bus eligibility.

At the new John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School in Graniteville, for example, the students are selected by lottery and come from all over Staten Island. But 50 of the 75 students in the inaugural class were denied school bus service. Apparently, bus routes were never established.

Similarly, many sixth-graders at the Marsh Avenue Expeditionary Learning School, New Springville, also eligible, were turned down.

Aside from such regular bungling, there’s the method that leads to this madness: Officials with the Office of Pupil Transportation simply sit down with a map and measure the distance between a child’s home and school, factor in the child’s age and make an up-or-down decision on eligibility, without regard to any other consideration.

On Staten Island, in particular, another consideration might well include the abysmal lack of suitable alternative transportation options.

Joan McKeever-Thomas, Staten Island parent liaison for the United Federation of Teachers, said, “They’re just looking at mileage and numbers. They never look out for the children.”

And, as usual, the DOE offers pablum in response to parents’ legitimate worries. Their concerns are being “evaluated,” we’re assured. But that’s about as far as it will go, given the DOE’s obsession with scrimping on bus service.

To that anxiety over eligibility, add the screwy routing that keeps some kids on buses for hours, late buses, defective buses, etc., and you have a prescription for this predictable chaos.

No wonder such a high percentage of frustrated Staten Island parents avoid the issue by driving their kids to school themselves. In other words, this restrictive and glitch-laden school-bus system puts tens of thousands more cars on the roads each day.

This, in a city that keeps talking about “green” initiatives and fretting about public health and safety.

How about this green initiative: A reliable, safe school bus system that actually works and serves all the children who need it. We understand that it’s difficult in such a large city, but you’d figure after all these years, the DOE would have gotten it right by now.